Russian Winter Read online

  When Nina told the other girls at school she might be going to a school for ballerinas, they didn’t seem envious. None of them has seen ballet, and Nina didn’t quite know how to describe what she saw in the dance pavilion. Sometimes, on nights when she lies in bed trying to fend off the frightened feeling—a dark chill that blows through the building and dims the grown-ups’ faces, colder and darker the later the hour becomes—she pictures the ballerinas on the stage in the park, their gauzy skirts rippling out like waterfalls, and imagines her own hair in a tight little crown on her head, and the ribbons of pointe shoes wrapped around her ankles.

  Now, with a whole troop of girls, she and Vera are taken to a large room where a row of men and women sit behind a very long table. A slip of paper with a number written on it has been pinned to each girl’s dress; when their numbers are called—in small groups, by the thin, strict-looking man seated at the very end of the table—the girls must step into the center of the room. The wooden floor slopes down toward a wall lined with tall, framed mirrors.

  Already, without having danced at all, some of the girls are being dismissed. But Nina and Vera are in the group that is ushered to one corner of the room, where the strict-looking man explains that they are to walk, one after the other, across the floor so that their footsteps match the music. That is the only instruction they are given, and now, seated at a shiny piano, a woman with her hair piled high on her head begins to play—something pretty but also somehow sad, the tinkling of the piano keys like drops of rain splattering. One by one the girls make their way across the room. But at her turn Vera remains still, eyes wide, and Nina, waiting behind her, begins to worry. “Come on.” Nina grabs Vera’s hand, and the two of them move forward together, until Nina feels the tension in Vera’s fingers relax. When Nina lets go, Vera continues ahead, airy and at ease, while Nina returns to her slot behind her.

  Now that everyone has reached the other corner of the room, they are asked to go across once more—this time with one large step and two small ones, over and over. The music has changed to something faster and very grand. Hearing it, moving along with it, Nina feels herself shifting into a new being.

  Back outside afterward, the air carries the scent of lilacs. Warm sun through the cotton of their dresses. Ice cream scoops from a street vendor. For a short while Vera, too, seemed happy about the dance exam, aware that, like Nina, she performed well in the end. But now she is oddly quiet, and Mother’s thoughts are clearly elsewhere, so that Nina feels it creeping back, the dark nighttime feeling—so unlike the visible lightness around them, the sunny June freedom, everyone outdoors without a coat or hat. She tries to will the feeling away, thinks about the ballet school, about the man who came to her at the end to yank her leg up, this way and that, and examine the soles of her feet, asking her to point and flex her toes, and was pleased with what he saw. Vera too, unlike most of the other girls, was inspected from head to toe with approval.

  When they pass the grand hotel at the corner, the sidewalk café is open, the first time since the long winter. “Look!” Vera says, pausing. A woman is exiting the hotel, ushered through a wide glass revolving door—the only revolving door in the city, pushed round by two dour-faced men in long jackets.

  The woman is unlike any Nina has ever seen, wearing a dress suit of a fine pale gray-blue color, with a small hat at a slant on her head, and on her hands short clean white gloves. Gloves in springtime! And the delicacy of that grayish blue shade…Nina knows only a few fabrics, the same dark plum colors in winter and cheerily ugly patterns in summer, nothing in between.

  And then Nina sees the most remarkable thing: the woman has jewels in her ears. Diamonds, small yet twinkling mightily. For a moment Nina is almost breathless. The only earrings she has seen are big dull beads that hang down from clips: pearls, heavy-looking, or glassy lumps of brown or marbled green stone. And so these tiny glittering diamonds are startling. And they are in her ears!

  Nina’s mother looks away as the woman passes, but Vera asks, “Who is she?”

  “American, I suppose.” Mother reaches her hand out to Nina to show that it is time to continue on. But Mother’s perfect oval face and slender waist must have impressed the guards—or perhaps they are bored and want to show off. They gesture to Nina and Vera, to allow them a turn through the doors.

  Utter silence as the men solemnly escort them round. Nina glimpses, for mere seconds, the hotel’s immense lobby, its gleaming floor and thick runner of carpet, and an enormous mirror with a heavy gilt frame. The ceiling is impossibly high, with glittering lights shining down. It is the first time Nina has seen such things, a whole other world—but the slow rotation continues, and now the marble floor, the plush carpet, the gold mirror and chandelier, are already behind her. That twinkling shower of lights—and the American woman’s diamonds right there in her earlobes, tiny and bright, like stars.

  Outside again, the tour over, Nina asks, “Did you see the lady’s ears?”

  Mother just gives a look that reminds her to thank the doormen.

  “Thank you very much.” Nina and Vera curtsy as they were taught at the audition, one foot behind the other, hands lifting the edges of their skirts, and turn away from the fascinating door, that entrance to a whole other world, and only then does the understanding come to Nina, strongly, acutely—much more than at the Bolshoi school—that something momentous has occurred.

  WHEN THEY RETURN to the courtyard, the old woman who cleans the building looks quickly away. Frown of her mouth chewing sunflower seeds. Eyes shifting as she sweeps. She moves toward the only other people in the courtyard, a young couple who live in the same apartment as Nina and her mother and grandmother.

  Mother has said to stay and play, she will send Nina’s and Vera’s grandmothers down to fetch them. But Nina keeps one ear listening to what the old woman is saying. She hears Vera’s parents’ names, and then, “There was always something odd about them.”

  Nina has heard this before—not about Vera’s parents but other people in the building, who now are gone. Whispers in the courtyard, something odd…

  Vera turns and runs to the other side of the courtyard, where her grandmother has appeared.

  Nina’s grandmother, too, has arrived, her kerchief loosely knotted beneath her chin. “Come here, Nina!” But Nina continues to listen. “What did they do?” the young couple is asking, as the janitoress splashes a bucket of dirty water around the entryway. At the other side of the courtyard, Vera’s grandmother is taking Vera back inside, without even letting her say good-bye.

  “Ninochka! Come!” Her grandmother’s voice is shrill instead of warm and slightly annoyed, as it usually is. The old janitoress repeats herself: “I always knew something wasn’t right about them.” Nina looks up, past the crooked little balconies, to the window of the room where Vera’s family lives. Pale morning glories tremble in the breeze. Nina turns and runs, straight into her grandmother’s arms, to lean against her chest and feel the warmth of her body.

  BY THE TIME the girl from Beller had left, the sky was black, the salon gloomy. In her wheelchair, Nina went about tugging the cords of various lamps, shedding weak saffron rays down upon themselves and little else. Instead of relief at having taken care of things, she felt the same wariness, the same anxiety she had for a fortnight now.

  She rolled the wheelchair up to her desk. With the little key she kept in her pocket, she opened the top drawer. She hadn’t looked back at the letter since first receiving it two weeks ago. Even then she had read it just once, hastily. She had always been one to make rash decisions; it was her nature. Now, though, she unfolded the typed page slowly, trying not to look at the photograph it enclosed.

  I am sending you this letter and the accompanying photograph after much contemplation. Perhaps you have already recognized my name on the return address, recalled even the very first letter I sent you, after our brief meeting three decades ago, back when I—

  There was the click of the lock on the front door, th
e sound of the heavy door swinging open. “Hello, you!” came the voice of Cynthia, the wiry West Indian woman who came each evening to cook Nina’s dinner and ask embarrassing questions about her bodily functions; days she worked as a registered nurse at Mass General. Nina slid the letter and photograph back inside the envelope as Cynthia called out, in a voice still tinged with the genially arrogant accent of her native country, “Where you at, sugar?” She often called Nina “sugar.” Nina supposed it was some sort of private joke.

  “I am here, Cynthia, I am fine.” Nina returned the envelope to the drawer. To think that there had been a time when she was left to do things for herself, unattended, without the worried ministration of others…For over a year now Cynthia had been necessary, the last person Nina saw each night after being helped from her wheelchair to her bath and back out again. Of some indeterminate early-middle age, Cynthia had a boyfriend named Billy whose schedule and availability directly dictated which meals she prepared. On nights when she was to see him, Cynthia would not cook with onions, garlic, broccoli, or Brussels sprouts, lest the smell cling to her hair. Other days she had no ban on any particular vegetables.

  Nina could hear Cynthia hanging her coat, taking her little sack of groceries to the kitchen. The situation was appalling, really. Especially for someone like Nina, who had once been so strong, and was not yet even truly old. All the time now, it seemed, octogenarians went traipsing around the globe on cruises and walking tours. But Nina’s once-supple body, now eerily stiff, allowed no such diversions. Even this afternoon, the auction house girl had been unable to refrain from saying, at one point, “You must miss dancing,” as she eyed Nina’s swollen knuckles. She had looked horrified, actually, the way young people do when faced with the misfortunes of the elderly.

  “I do miss it,” Nina had said. “Every day I miss it. I miss the way it felt to dance.”

  Now Cynthia was calling out again, threatening to tell all about her day, brisk steps in her white nurse’s shoes as she approached the study. Nina slid the envelope more deeply into the drawer. Her knuckles ached as she twisted the lock with the tiny key. She felt no better than before, knowing the photograph was still there.

  GRIGORI SOLODIN SAW the announcement on the third day of the new semester. He liked to be at his desk before eight, while the Department of Foreign Languages was still quiet and the secretaries hadn’t yet arrived to unlock the main office. For a half hour or so the wooden hallways—cold from the heat having been off all night—remained peaceful, no trampling up and down the narrow stairway whose marble steps were worn like slings in the center. Much better than being home, that still somehow unfamiliar silence. Here Grigori could read the newspaper in peace and smoke his cigarettes without his colleague Evelyn berating him about his lungs or Carla, the secretary, wrinkling her nose exaggeratedly and reminding him that the campus was now officially “Smoke-Free.” Then at eight thirty Carla and her assistant Dave would arrive to flick on all the photocopiers and printers and anything else that hummed.

  Grigori reached for his lighter, the cartridge small in his hand. First it had simply been for support, something to soothe him while Christine was ill. Now it was one of his few daily pleasures. And yet he hadn’t allowed himself to bring the habit into his home, too aware of what Christine would have said, how she would have felt about it. Anyway, he didn’t plan to keep it up much longer (though it had been, now, two years). Installed behind his desk, he breathed the comforting aroma of that first light. He wore a tailored suit, clean if lightly rumpled, with a handkerchief poking up optimistically from his breast pocket. This costume he had adopted twenty-five years earlier, during his very first semester teaching here, when he had also tried growing a beard and smoking a pipe—anything to appear even a year or so older than his actual age. Even now, at fifty, his face had few lines, and his hair, thick in a way that seemed to ask to be mussed, remained dark and full. Tall, trim, he still possessed something of his youthful lankiness. Yet just yesterday he had been interviewed for the university newspaper by a spotty-faced sophomore who asked, in all seriousness, “How does it feel to be inaugurated into the Quarter Century Club?” For his twenty-five years of service Grigori had received a heavy maroon ballpoint pen and a handwritten note of gratitude from the provost; to the sophomore with the stenography pad and the serious question, Grigori answered, with the merest glint in his eye, “Horrifying.”

  He often adopted this tone (dry, poker-faced, with a slight and enigmatic accent) in his communications with the student population—yet they liked his deadpan delivery, his faux-curmudgeonly jokes, indeed seemed even to like Grigori himself. And he liked his students, or at least did not dislike them, tried not to show dismay at their sometimes shocking lack of knowledge, of curiosity, as they sat there in their Red Sox caps and zippered fleece jackets like members of some prosperous gang. In the warmer months they wore flip-flops, which they kicked off during class as if lounging on a gigantic beach towel. It was just one of the many signs that the world was plunging toward ruin. Grigori, meanwhile, continued to dress for class in handsome suits, because he had not yet abandoned the notion that what he did for a living was honorable—and because he retained the same worry he had first developed as a young teaching fellow studying for long hours in the privacy of his rented room: that he might one day mistakenly show up for class still wearing his slippers.

  Now he took a puff on his cigarette and unfolded his copy of the Globe. The usual depressing stuff—the president intent on starting his second war in two years. But in the Arts section a headline took Grigori by surprise: “Ballerina Revskaya to Auction Jewels.”

  A noise issued from him, a low “Huh.” And then came the sinking feeling, the awful deflation.

  Though a month had passed, he had not given up hope—not really, not until now. He had believed, or tried to believe, that there might be some sort of movement toward one another.

  Instead, this.

  Well, why should he have expected otherwise? It was what he had been purposely avoiding, really. For two years the idea had gnawed at him. But grief had paralyzed him, and then only as it lifted did he find he could imagine trying again. And yet it hadn’t worked. There would always be this distance. He would never get any closer.

  He tried to read the article but found he wasn’t taking in the sentences. His heart rushed as it had the last time he had seen Nina Revskaya, a good ten years ago, at a benefit for the Boston Ballet. From the grand lobby of the Wang Theatre, he had watched her stand on the great marble stairway and make a brief, perfectly worded speech about the importance of benefactors to the arts. She held her head high, if somewhat stiffly, her hair still dark—nearly black—despite her age and in a bun so tight it pulled her wrinkles smooth. Next to him, at their spot at the back of the crowd, Christine held lightly on to his arm, her other hand holding a champagne flute. Nina Revskaya seemed to wince as she spoke; it was clear that every movement pained her. When the ballet director led her slowly down the magnificent staircase and through the lobby, Grigori had thought, What if? What if I approached her? But of course he didn’t dare. And then Christine was leading him in the other direction, toward the company’s newest star, a young Cuban dancer known for his jumps.

  Grigori tossed the newspaper down on his desk. That she could want to be rid of him so badly—so badly as to rid herself of her beloved jewels.

  He pushed his chair back, stood up. A slap in the face, that’s what this was. And really she doesn’t even know me….

  The cocoon of his office was no comfort to him now. Grigori realized that he was pacing, and forced himself to stop. Then he grabbed his coat and gloves and ducked out the door to make his way down the narrow stairs and out of the building.

  IN THE CAMPUS Café, the morning shift was already in place. Behind the counter a skinny girl with dyed-black hair served coffee and enormous bagels, while the stoned assistant manager, singing happily along with the stereo, took too long to steam the milk. A few conscientious
undergraduates huddled around one of the round tables, and at the back of the room a knot of visiting professors argued amicably. Placing his order, Grigori viewed the scene with a sense of defeat.

  The girl at the counter batted her eyelashes artfully as she handed him a thick wedge of coffee cake. Grigori took it up from its little flap of waxed paper and felt immediately guilty; as with his smoking, Christine would not have approved. He thought of her, of what he would give to have her with him at this moment.

  “Grigori!”

  Zoltan Romhanyi sat at a table by the window, plastic bags full of books and papers all around him. “Come, come!” he called, gesturing, and then hunched down to scribble something in his notebook with great speed despite his shaky, aged hand. For the past year he had been composing a memoir about his escape from Hungary following the ’56 uprising and his subsequent years as a key figure—if somewhat on the sidelines—in the London arts scene.

  “Zoltan, happy New Year.”

  “Are you sure, Grigori?”

  “Does it show on my face, then?”

  “You look dashing as always—but tired.”

  Grigori had to laugh, being told he looked tired by a man twenty years his senior—a man of delicate health, who had spent much of Christmas break in the hospital, recovering from undiagnosed pneumonia, and who the previous winter had slipped on the ice and broken his shoulder for a second time. “You put me in my place, Zoltan. I have no right to be tired. I’m frustrated this morning, that’s all. But I’m glad to see you. You’re looking much better.”

  Perhaps it was odd, that Grigori’s favorite colleague and friend was nearly a generation older than himself—but he preferred that to the opposite phenomenon, professors who mingled with their students in the pub. Zoltan’s deeply lined face, the sags of skin beneath his eyes, the tremor in his hands, the small cloud of grizzled hair resting lightly atop his scalp…none of this spoke of the man Zoltan had once, briefly, been: the pride and dismay of literary Eastern Europe, symbolic hero to the enlightened West, a young, skinny émigré poet in borrowed clothes. “I’m feeling much better,” he said now. “I love this time of morning, don’t you?” His anomalous accent (hard Magyar rhythms tamed by a British lilt) made him sound almost fey. “You can practically feel the sun rising. Here, sit down.” He pushed ineffectually at some of the papers atop the table.